


A Cure for Your Crimes

by areyoutenyearsago



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Confused Ed, Ed is pining too he's just in denial about it, Eventual relationship, Fix-It of Sorts, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Pining Oswald, Violence, its gonna take a little angst and hurt and confusion to get back to that 3x05 state of bliss, long fic, multi-chaptered, post 3x11, there is nsfw content but the emphasis is on fixing the mess of the current os/ed/isabella storyline, there will be fluff soon i promise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-06 19:44:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8766505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/areyoutenyearsago/pseuds/areyoutenyearsago
Summary: Set after 3x11.Despite already knowing that Oswald killed Isabella, it still changes things when Ed hears it from him. There is so much noise in his head, and he just wants a little bit of quiet."It wasn’t too far out of the ordinary range of experiences for an encounter with a friend to lead to some sort of arousal. Edward reasoned, however, that it was an out of the ordinary experience when said encounter involved choking and death threats, and said friend had killed his girlfriend."





	1. you are red, violent red

**Author's Note:**

> The fic title is a lyric from Tegan and Sara's "The Cure", and the chapter title is a lyric from Taking Back Sunday's "MakeDamnSure"
> 
> So the midseason finale was pretty upsetting for everyone, and this is my attempt at trying not to dwell on it. I'll be updating every Monday between 8-9pm EST, at least until Gotham comes back for 3B.

“You have to understand, Ed, I--” Oswald’s voice caught in his throat, and he held on to either side of the sink basin for support. Once again, he was talking to an empty room. Even still, he couldn’t manage to get the words out. How could he spin this one? How could he make it sound justified? He couldn’t.

Time was running out. Edward was smart —  something Oswald hadn’t taken into account so many times since the beginning of this mess — and bound to figure out the truth of it all sooner or later. The only thing that could soften the blow, maybe, was if Oswald could manage to tell him first. He cleared his throat and started again. “You have to understand, Ed, that I wasn’t trying to hurt you.” The words sounded flimsy, even to him. He felt a sob in the back of his throat, but he wouldn’t allow it to break through to the surface. 

This ‘having a breakdown in a tiny bathroom, staring at your own reflection’ occurrence was supposed to be Edward’s thing. Then again, wasn’t Isabella supposed to be Edward’s thing? And Oswald had taken that, too. Maybe he could leave nothing be. Maybe this feeling was too corrosive, too consuming to not be destructive. 

But Oswald didn’t understand the feelings building beneath his skin. He’d known love before, of course, but this was different. With Ed, he actually felt equal. He actually felt appreciated, and that left a whole part of him aware of the constant possibility that Edward could stop appreciating him. And after the week they’d had, with that awful confession and all the anxiety-wracked hours that followed, Oswald was sure that time was looming.

Oswald cried, and he wiped incessantly at the tears with his knuckles. As his nose turned red, and his composure eroded away, the front door opened.

He hadn’t bothered closing the bathroom door, even if he had decided to cry in the one that faced the front of the house. Maybe there was a part of him that just wanted to be caught. A part that just wanted to be comforted, held. It didn’t matter, Ed was always out lately, and even when he was around his face just looked like a blank mask. Something had changed, Oswald knew, no doubt caused by his own stupid attempts at explaining his feelings.  _ Love _ , Edward had once told him,  _ will always be our most crippling weakness. _

But apparently, Ed had chosen today to come home early. As soon as he stepped through the threshold, Oswald moved to close the door. Edward’s voice stopped him.

“Oswald?” He asked it in that voice of his that always drove Oswald up the wall: probing but detached. It made him want to scream at Ed, tell him to make up his mind about nothing in particular. Oswald never claimed to be rational. 

“Yes?” he replied, not looking away from the mirror. He put his hands over his eyes, just for good measure. 

Ed’s voice grew nearer. “Are you crying… in our bathroom?” 

Oswald sighed, but it came out more like a hiss. He felt volatile. He always felt  _ so _ volatile. “Am I, Ed?” He didn’t mean to sound so biting. 

Edward stopped, sighing. “Why?” he asked, but the word sounded like it was hard to say. Ed, despite his attempts, simply wasn’t a good liar. Oswald knew he wasn’t actually concerned, it was clear in his tone. But was Oswald’s love really so disgusting that Edward no longer retained any care for him? The entire situation just felt off, and wrong, and drowning. 

But he couldn’t say anything. The fear of losing Ed completely was paralysing, more so than continuing in the manner they were currently operating in. He opened his mouth to dismiss Ed, to tell him it was nothing, but that wasn’t what came out. 

“You have to understand, Ed, that I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”

“What?” Edward asked, a distinct growl in the back of his voice. 

“I was being irrational,” Oswald continued, taking his hands from his eyes to make eye contact with Edward. He wasn’t sure what he was doing, or why he was doing it. “And childish. I just couldn’t stand to see the two of you together like that, not when you’d just met her and we… We went way back, you know? That’s what it felt like.”

Edward was staring at him, jaw clenched. Oswald forced himself to continue.

“The night you met Isabella, you blew off our dinner plans. Which I had set in the first place because… Because I wanted you to know. I wanted you to know how I felt. And I kept trying to sabotage your relationship because… Ed, you were the first good thing in my life, and you were slipping away. I wasn’t thinking of you when I had her brakes cut. I was thinking of self preservation. And I know… I know that’s an awful excuse, but it’s all I have.”

For awhile, Edward didn’t speak. He regarded Oswald with that signature, teeth-slightly-bared, piercing look. “So you admit that you killed her?”

Oswald nodded. “Yes.”

Edward looked at Oswald, blinking. His face was unreadable, but Oswald could see the anger seeping from him with every subtle shake of his shoulders. “I could kill you right now,” he said, and Oswald felt a rare fear clutching onto his heart. 

“Ed-” 

“But I won’t.” 

Oswald let out a small sigh of relief, but the tension in his body remained.

“I could wrap my hands around your throat,” Edward tilted his head as he said this, as if to survey him better. Oswald gulped. 

“I don’t even think you’d fight it.” 

Oswald wanted to point out that that was not entirely true. That he loved Ed, but in the end, all he had was himself, and that was something he had to honor. But he said nothing, and watched Ed slink forward nonetheless, just because he was curious. 

“To squeeze the life out of you, watch it drain from your eyes,” Edward spoke, clinically. He was just inches apart from Oswald now, his long fingers stretching delicately around Oswald’s neck. “To take from you,” his grip tightened with each word he spoke, but Oswald didn’t struggle, “what you took from her.” His lips curled up into an off-kilter smile. “How satisfying that sounds.” 

“Do it,” Oswald managed through the tightness around his neck. 

“She made me happy,” Edward admitted, the emotion finally seeping back into his voice. “And you took her from me.”

“Ed,” Oswald pleaded, but with the diminishing of his breath it came out like a strangled moan.

Edward stilled in his movements, looking Oswald up and down again. He released his grip on Oswald, momentarily, and then pressed against his neck again. Oswald groaned, and Edward bared his teeth. 

“Ed-” 

Edward’s head whipped up, and he began to study Oswald’s face. Something strange, a mix of heat and hurt, flickered in Ed’s eyes, and he let go of Oswald’s neck. 

Oswald gasped, and began to cough. Edward stood in front of him, still looking up and down with that same confused face. 

“Like I said,” he began, at last, “I could kill you right now, but I’m not going to. I can do…  _ Better _ than that.” 

Oswald wanted to respond, but he wasn’t sure he physically could. His throat felt raw, and there was a warmth at the bottom of his stomach that he couldn’t explain. He sank to the floor and watched Edward walk away, and he didn’t stand again until long after the front door had shut.

 

OOO

 

It wasn’t too far out of the ordinary range of experiences for an encounter with a friend to lead to some sort of arousal. Edward reasoned, however, that it  _ was  _ an out of the ordinary experience when said encounter involved choking and death threats, and said friend had killed his girlfriend. 

But still, Edward was all too aware of the building sensation in his stomach, of the tightness now apparent in his dress pants. As soon as he left the mansion, he sunk to the ground behind the front bushes, panting. He looked down at his hands, and thought again of his fingers wrapping almost delicately around Oswald’s throat. He thought of the way Oswald’s eyes had fluttered, how his mouth had opened ever so slightly to whimper Ed’s name. Finally, he had been in control of the situation. Finally, he had had Oswald right where he wanted him. 

The arousal in the pit of Ed’s stomach grew with each thought, and he ran a hand through his hair just to stop from reaching out to touch himself. He was sure he looked positively undignified in the moment, sitting uncomposed on the dirt ground, hair mussed up. But for once, Ed wasn’t sure he cared.

 

OOO

 

“You’re late,” Barbara remarked, taking a sip of a pastel colored cocktail as Ed entered the room.

“I had some things to take care of beforehand,” Edward explained, placing his hands into his pockets to avoid them shaking. Getting rid of that strange feeling earlier had taken longer than expected, and he was about thirty minutes late to their designated meeting.

“Don’t let it happen again.”

Edward nodded and took a seat at the bar. “Something has happened.”

“Let me guess, you met  _ another _ girl who looks exactly like that ex of yours you killed?”

Ed glared at her, scowling just slightly. “Penguin confessed to killing Isabella.” 

Barbara raised an eyebrow, looking genuinely caught off guard for a second. “Gosh, he really  _ does  _ love you. I’m impressed.”

“He killed the woman I loved. There’s nothing romantic about that.” 

“Baby, darling, didn’t  _ you _ kill the  _ first _ woman you loved?”

He shook his head. “That was an accident. What Penguin did was intentional and despicable.”

“Didn’t you kill her boyfriend before that?”

Ed looked away, but he didn’t object to what was being said. 

Barbara giggled, continuing on, “and didn’t  _ I _ try to kill my ex fiance’s new girlfriend? Face it, babes, we’re  _ all  _ Penguin. It’s time you get off that high horse of yours.” 

Ed’s jaw clenched, and he stared at her. “I’m not on any sort of horse.”

“Whatever you say. Just don’t forget that we’ve all been partial to a bit of mad love around here.”

Edward’s eyebrows furrowed, and he stared into the distance. “If we’re working together, I’d prefer if you didn’t mention Penguin’s feelings to me.”

Barbara rolled her eyes, taking another sip of her drink. “Well darling, if we’re working together I’m gonna need a little something from you as well.”

“What?”

“Leave your prejudice at the door, babe, it is so  _ not _ cute.”

Edward raised an eyebrow. “Prejudice?”

“That’s what I said.”

“You think I have a problem with Penguin liking men?”

“Maybe not men in general, but  _ you _ at the very least.”

Ed pressed his lips together, thinking. Did he have a problem with it? The topic definitely got to him in some way, he couldn’t deny that. He thought of the scene earlier, and what the sight of Penguin being choked had done to him. He found himself laughing from the contradictory nature of it all.

“What?” Barbara hissed. 

Edward looked up, blinking. “I’m sorry?”

“Why do you look like you know something I don’t?” 

Another burst of laughter escaped Ed, but ceased suddenly after he got the feeling that he was doing some injustice to Isabella by making light of it all. Overwhelmed, he dropped his head onto the table with a sigh. 

“Are you going to talk?” Barbara asked, and he could almost see her rolling her eyes. She sighed. “No, of course you’re not, what did I expect? Anyway, what exactly did you have in mind when you said we should destroy Penguin? And how much of that can we still do now that he knows you know?” 

He kept his eyes screwed shut and his forehead against the wooden of the bar.  _ Destroy Penguin, destroy Penguin, destroy Penguin _ . The words ran through his head and all he could see was Oswald, with his distinct nose and gradient of freckles, eyes fluttering shut, mouth forming Ed’s name. He was getting carried away again. 

“I told him I could kill him, but I wasn’t going to,” Edward spoke, and he wasn’t entirely sure why he was telling Babs any of this. Maybe because it seemed like if anyone would care about the strange encounter, it would be her. Barbara Kean ate this kind of thing up.

“As expected,” Barbara said.

Ed raised his head, and he watched Barbara examine her nails. “But I got a little carried away. Telling him how… Showing him how I would do it.”

“What, you didn’t actually kill him, did you?”

Edward found himself shaking his head all too quickly, and he wondered for a moment what that said about him. “No. No, I just choked him a little bit.”

“Hey, some people are into that,” Barbara joked. When Edward failed to meet her gaze, swallowing unconsciously instead, she raised an eyebrow at him. “Oh my god, wait, was  _ he  _ into it?”

“I don’t,” Ed found himself stumbling over his own words, “I don’t know.”

“Oh!” Barbara laughed, grabbing onto the edge of the bar for support. “What a goddamn plot twist, Nygma!  _ You  _ were into it, weren’t you?”

Ed looked away, narrowing his eyes. 

“Hey, you know, to each their own.” She shrugged, raising her glass. “No one cares if you’re fucking him, babe, just as long as you’re still game to bring him down.”  
“I am not sleeping with Oswald,” Edward said. 

“Who am I to judge if you were?”

“But I’m not.”

“But you could be,” Barbara argued. “Would you like that?”

Edward shook his head. “He killed my girlfriend.”  
Barbara sighed, shrugging her shoulders. “I guess that would stop _some_ people. I’m not fully convinced it would stop you, though.”

 

OOO

 

Killing Dougherty had been for Kristen’s own good. He was hurting her, and Ed couldn’t stand to see her hurt. But he couldn’t deny the anger, the pure rage that coursed through his veins whenever he saw them together, even before everything got so messy. 

He saw a bit of himself in Oswald, and a bit of Oswald in himself. That was what drew them together in the first place. The way they paralleled and replicated one another was stunning and unprecedented. 

But right now, it just felt like a slap in the face. Should Ed have seen this coming? Should he have known that Oswald would take the path that Ed had before the two grew close? No, to have any premonition of the events that occurred would have involved Edward being conscious of Oswald’s feelings for him, and that consciousness just hadn’t been there. 

Maybe he had suspected it. Maybe the thought had crossed his mind once or twice. Maybe Penguin’s gaze had lingered just a little too long, his hugs just a little too tight, and Ed had wondered about what it could mean. 

He hadn’t known that Oswald even liked men. He hadn’t known that Oswald even liked  _ anyone  _ in that way. Edward found himself considering Detective Gordon, and the way Oswald talked of him. Something sick and sticky and red lurched in his stomach, like he wanted to be the only one Oswald fell for. Like he wanted to be different to him somehow; special. 

Edward found himself at the store, picking up milk and eggs and other necessities like life was still going on as normal. He found himself slipping eggnog into the cart, remembering despite his own distaste for it that Oswald liked it at this season. Maybe there was a healing quality to going about routine like this, or maybe he was just too confused to do anything else.

On his way to the check out, he passed the wine section and thought of Isabella again, a pang in his chest. For some reason, he stopped, positioning himself in the exact place he’d first seen her. He conjured up his first thoughts, and remembered mistaking her for Kristen at the start. 

She did look so much like her. It seemed almost unfair to Edward, falling in love with two girls who looked so closely alike. Maybe it wasn’t the most healthy thing, considering how his story with Kristen had ended.

Hadn’t Oswald tried to tell him that? And maybe the advice was clouded with some sort of unexpressed affection, but there was a valid point at the heart of that.

_ Oswald _ . Ed thought of that night in the wine section again, and what he was doing there in the first place. Os was planning to confess that night, to tell him how he felt. Edward wondered how he would’ve reacted back then, if he and Isabella hadn’t crossed paths. The answer didn’t come easy to him, and eventually he realized it wouldn’t come at all. There was something so troubling about that.

Anger came back to him like a flood on the car ride home, maybe even made worse by the reminder of how much he cared for Penguin. The level of trust they had… And it still hadn’t been enough to make him forego his usual ways. He loved Ed, maybe, but he hadn’t prioritized his feelings. 

He stopped the car in the driveway just past sundown, carrying the grocery bag with both hands up to the front door. The way he fumbled with his keys felt so normal, as if the war inside his head wasn’t still raging on. 

When he entered the mansion, Ed heard the same soft crying sound he’d encountered the last time, and once again he felt that mix of satisfaction and worry. 

Edward felt Penguin’s presence while he was putting away the groceries, and for a moment he considered ignoring him. But there was an itch in his stomach that compelled him to clear his throat and speak. “Oswald.” He said it levelly, like he had no personal interest in the name, and continued putting the carton of eggs into the fridge.

“Ed,” Oswald replied, feebly, and Edward got a flash of the scene earlier that day, reminded of the reaction Penguin saying his name had produced in him then. 

There was so much thought to sift through. He was drowning in it.

“I got eggnog,” he said, lifting the carton from the bag and putting it into the fridge. 

“I thought you hated eggnog?”  
“I do.” Ed still didn’t turn to face him. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if he did. “But I got it anyway.” 

“I didn’t think you’d be coming back.”

Edward sighed. “Where else could I go?” 

He heard Oswald give a nervous sigh behind him. “Do you —  Do you think we should talk about it?”

There was something so tempting to Edward about  _ not  _ talking about it. About ignoring the elephant in the room, carrying on like nothing had happened. But he was too angry. He was too confused. “Did you have any tea today?”

When Oswald replied, his voice sounded reminiscent of the way it had when they first met, with just a little more hoarseness. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Ginger tea with honey,” Ed recalled. He turned around to deliver the next line. “I expect your throat is sore?”

Oswald was staring at him like he couldn’t quite piece Edward together, but Ed wasn’t focused on his expression.

Oswald’s neck was adorned with vivid purple and red bruises that somehow made him look  _ delicate _ , as if the kingpin of Gotham’s underworld could be such a thing. It brought something out from Ed’s chest, almost like a fluttering. Almost like concern. He tried to remember Isabella, as if to push the feelings from his head, but then he just got thinking about Miss Kringle. He remembered the bruises. He remembered Tom Dougherty. He remembered the hot blood cooling and drying on his knife.

All of his opinions clashed, once again, and he felt too overwhelmed to do anything for a moment. “Oswald,” he whispered, and the words came out pained. 

Oswald looked back at Ed, but didn’t speak. Maybe it hurt too much. Maybe he just didn’t know what to say.

Edward closed the fridge haphazardly, stepping forward until he could reach Oswald’s neck with his fingers. He touched the bruises, gingerly, and wasn’t sure whether to be surprised or not that Oswald let him. Oswald tilted his head up, just slightly, allowing Ed better access to the wounds. 

“Why did you tell me?” Ed asked. 

Oswald bit back a sob, clearing his throat. “You were already gone anyway.”

“Because I found out. Because I knew it was you.”

“Since when?”

“Barbara told me, but I didn’t believe her at first.” Ed’s thumb was stroking a particularly dark bruise on the side of his neck. 

“What made you realize?”

“She said you did it because you were in love with me. I thought that was an absurd idea. Still, I tested it.”

Oswald jerked back then, leaving Edward’s hand hanging in the air. “What? So that day when I told you, you planned that?”

“I had no other choice.”

“You manipulated me!” Oswald accused. 

Edward raised his arms in the air. “What can I say, I learned from the best.”

He looked for a moment like he wanted to argue, but instead Oswald dropped his shoulders in defeat. “I don’t know how to share this bond with someone. To have a real friend… I’m not one for honesty, Ed. I was never honest to my mother, and no one else has ever been as close to me as I was to her. And then you came along. I don’t like being honest with you, I won’t deny that. If I’m honest, what reason would you have to stay?”

“I would stay because I care about you,” Edward said, eyes downcast. “Flaws and all. But this…”

“It was too far,” Oswald finished. “I know. And I don’t feel bad about it. I feel bad that it hurt you, because it was a breach of trust, and yes, if I could do that situation over I wouldn’t have had her killed, but in all honesty, I don’t feel bad that she’s dead. That’s the kind of person I am, and that’s not exactly something I’m fond of admitting to the people I care about.”

Surprisingly, no anger came to Ed at these comments. He didn’t quite know why until he spoke. “What you don’t understand, Oswald, is that the kind of person you are is the kind of person I am too. And that’s a weakness about our dynamic. You don’t want to show yourself to me, and I don’t want to show myself to you. So nothing gets talked about, and we sneak around and hurt each other and don’t know how to stop.”

“And now everything’s ruined,” Oswald said, looking down. 

Edward felt that pull again to make the both of them forget the entire thing. To go back to that couch all those nights ago, when the strangulation bruises were on Ed’s neck instead. “Tell me something,” he blurted, unsure what else to say. 

“What?”

“Tell me something…” Edward paused, mouth open, trying to finish his sentence. “Honest.”

Oswald paused, looking up again. “I’ve trained myself to talk in the specific way I do because I think it makes me sound interesting, and I can’t bear to have people think I’m like everybody else.”

Edward nodded. 

“Your turn.”  
Before Ed could stop to edit his own words, he was speaking. “When I was choking you earlier, Oswald, I became sexually aroused.” 

Oswald tilted his head slightly, opening and closing his mouth. 

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Edward berated himself, looking down. 

“No, we’re supposed to be trying honesty. That was, well, that was very honest,” Oswald laughed. 

“Too honest. It was an inside thought.” He stepped backward, turning to finish putting the groceries away. 

“I’m just trying to understand what it was about earlier that put you in that state.”

Edward closed his eyes and recalled the scene earlier, putting the lettuce in the produce drawer. “Your face,” he spoke, turning around. “How caught off-guard you looked, how vulnerable. And the way you said my name.”

Oswald went pink, accentuating the freckles all across his nose. Ed found himself smiling, despite his best efforts not to. “You like me when I’m vulnerable?” Oswald asked. 

“Yes,” Edward replied, and he found himself surprised by the intensity in his own voice.

Oswald stared at him, and Ed could guess there was some sort of intense inner dialogue going on behind his eyes. Eventually, he nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay?”  
Oswald stepped forward, grabbing Edward’s hand gingerly as he went. He tilted his head up again and guided Ed’s hand around his throat. 

“Oswald,” Ed whispered, but he was already lost in the unique wonder of it all, clenching his hand around Os’s throat, taking and taking. Just like before, Oswald’s eyes lost their focus, fluttering aimlessly. Ed watched them like they were two rare butterflies, daring to grace him with their presence. 

Before he could stop himself, Ed was letting go of Oswald’s neck and settling his hand along the other man’s jaw. He wasn’t sure why he’d done it, but it seemed a shame not to capitalize on a sight so beautiful in this way. Oswald had just began to look up, confused, when Ed pressed their lips together. He became still for a moment, but as Edward began to kiss him, Oswald kissed back with an equal fervor.

“Ed?” Oswald whispered as they pulled apart from one another. 

Edward was confused, shaking, staring at Oswald, feeling more at peace with himself than he had since Isabella passed. Since she was  _ murdered _ . There was so much in his brain: he wanted to care for Oswald, but he had such an overwhelming ache make him hurt, to make him suffer for all he had done. He wanted Isabella back, but also wanted nothing more than to see this current scene play out. All of his thoughts battled against one another in his mind until finally, with a deafening, silent bang, they all blew to bits. He wanted it all, and he would find a way have it. 

Gaze focused on Oswald again, there was a newfound heat in Edward’s tone when he spoke. “Don’t talk.” He edged closer and closer to him, until Oswald’s back was pressed against the wall. Edward bent down so that his lips were inches away from Oswald’s ear. “I wouldn’t know what to say back.”

Faced with the close proximity of their bodies, Oswald made a small, soft noise almost like the one he’d made earlier in the day. Edward’s eyes raked over him, pulled by some mysterious force, and he found himself fisting a hand into Oswald’s hair. It produced the same noise out of him again, and Ed looked into Oswald’s eyes. He closed the distance between them: chests, legs, mouths touching and moving and blurring together. Oswald clung onto him by the waist with one hand, and Edward held his other against the wall, as if to gain some false sense of control. 

Here, with Penguin pressed between him and the wall, kissing Ed back and gripping onto him like a lifeline, Edward felt a hyperactive, welcome kind of quiet in his mind. 

  
  
  
  



	2. to condition all the feelings that you feel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ed sets plans to take down Oswald into motion, Oswald receives a phone call from an old friend, and Edward & Oswald's post-confession relationship continues to evolve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Despite it being finals week for me, I still managed to get this finished on time! Many thanks to my wonderful beta (snazzyasalways on here) for beta-ing during their finals week and helping me reach this deadline.
> 
> Thank you all so much for your wonderful comments, they truly made my week. Let me know what in this chapter's working for you and what isn't, I want to make sure I'm giving you all good content.
> 
> The chapter title is a lyric from Tegan and Sara's "Red Belt".
> 
> (also, um, this chapter is a little more NSFW than the previous one.)
> 
> P.S. I made a tumblr so y'all can ask me questions & stuff! It's areyou10yearsago.tumblr.com, I'm also accepting requests for oneshots right now.

Ed was leaning over him in the strangest way, body weight resting just to the side, not touching Oswald at all. He was holding himself up by his hands, bracing them against the bedsheets, slightly bent over. They were both fully clothed, fully separate, the space between them made even more evident by the one place in which they were touching.

Edward’s lips were hot against Oswald’s neck: ghosting, kissing, sucking. Due to Oswald’s high collar, and the buttoned-up state of his shirt, there wasn’t much skin to get at. Oswald made it feel like enough anyway, leaning his head back into the mattress, arching to give Ed more access, more time. The noises Oswald made each time Ed sucked at a particularly sensitive area sent chills down his spine, building an unexplainable overwhelm inside of him.

Oswald lay with his hands resting atop his own stomach, longing to reach out and touch Ed. But he didn’t want to be presumptuous, for there must’ve been some reason why Ed was so far apart from him on the bed despite the current activity.

They had kissed quite a lot back in the kitchen, and then Ed was leading them into Oswald’s bedroom, shakily, as if afraid to break the mood.

Oswald couldn’t even fully tell what the mood was. He felt the intensity of Ed’s emotions with every touch, every bruise, every kiss, but he couldn’t quite put a name to the specific emotion. Maybe there wasn’t a name for whatever this was, not yet.

No matter the details, tension coiled in the pit of Oswald’s stomach. With Edward’s lips teasing at his neck, leaving cranberry marks around the bruises from earlier in the day, it was all Oswald could do to keep still. With such a small canvas to work with, Ed’s lips brushed over the same sensitive spots, filling Oswald with a strange mix of oversensitivity and arousal. He was caught off guard by the moan he let out, and even more so by Ed’s reaction to it.

Edward pulled back almost immediately, and at first Oswald worried he had done something wrong. It quickly became clear that this wasn’t the case, however, when he saw Ed’s face. He was looking at Oswald almost like he had when it was just the two of them in Edward’s tiny apartment, when Oswald was so closed off to the world and all Ed wanted to do was find a way past his walls. Ed was looking at Oswald like he was something special, something worth wanting. They locked eyes, and Ed’s face lost the look, seemingly unsure where to go from there.

Oswald cleared his throat. “Ed?”

“Yes?”

“You can, um. Do you want to, maybe…” He bit his lip, trying to swallow down the fear of rejection. “I’ve got this tie on, and my shirt's all buttoned, and it might be easier if…”

Edward blinked at him, deep in some sort of thought. “Yes,” he said, his voice lower, less refined than before.

“Alright.”

“Can I?” He gestured toward Oswald’s body.

Oswald wasn’t entirely certain what Ed was asking permission for, but he nodded nonetheless. There was something so reckless about the feelings he held for Ed, something that made him so uncharacteristically agreeable. It was like as long as Oswald was with Ed, none of his usual reservations seemed to matter as much. It was foolish.

Edward moved slowly at first, carefully. He inched forward, resting a hand momentarily against Oswald’s hands, a sign for him to move them aside. He did, and Ed’s hand continued upward, hovering just over Oswald like he was afraid to touch him. All Oswald wanted to do was reach out and snatch Ed’s wrist, tell him to touch him, tell him to stop acting so conflicted. He kept still instead, even as Edward’s hand finally made contact with Oswald’s tie.

Edward undid the tie methodically, slipping the length of it out from under Oswald’s neck when he was finished and placing it neatly on the bedside table. He started then by undoing the button of Oswald’s suit jacket, slipping it off of his shoulders and doing the same to his vest.

With both his jacket and vest on the floor beside the bed, Oswald felt vulnerable. Edward looked over him, taking in his socked feet, his still-on dress pants, buckle and all, and the thin fabric of his white dress shirt; a sharp contrast to the vivid bruising all over his neck. Oswald hoped, no, prayed, that Ed failed to notice the tenting at the front of his pants. Despite the situation, it would still feel like a grand embarrassment.

Tentatively, Ed undid the top button of Oswald’s dress shirt. After it popped open, and Oswald didn’t spontaneously combust, he seemed reassured enough to keep going. Edward unbuttoned the shirt to the bottom of Oswald’s sternum, leaving the rest of the buttons be. He looked at Oswald again, that glint of fear still in his eyes, as if he wasn’t sure whether to continue.

“Ed,” Oswald whispered, and Edward returned to himself.

Edward placed both of his hands at the top of Oswald’s chest, sliding under the fabric of his button up.

Oswald felt shivers everywhere Ed touched him, and he closed his eyes with a smile. Finally, Ed was touching him again. Finally, all was right.

Edward continued to move his hands, parting the fabric and exposing Oswald’s chest, collarbones, shoulders to the air. Once he’d gotten the shirt off both of Os’s shoulders, Ed leaned back in.

He sucked at a spot just above Oswald’s collarbone, and Oswald found himself arching unconsciously, brushing against Edward’s stomach in the process. Edward stopped, drawing back again. He bit his lip, as if trying to decide something, and slowly adjusted himself so that his legs were resting on either side of Oswald’s hips.

Something stopped Ed midway through leaning back down again, and Oswald knew exactly what it was. It didn’t matter if he had seen the front of Oswald’s pants earlier, he could surely _feel_ it now. Incidentally, Oswald could feel Edward too, hard beneath the expensive green fabric of his pants.

“Oh my,” Edward whispered, almost distantly. When he made eye contact with Oswald, an almost sinister smile adorning his lips, Oswald gave a nod.

Grounding his hands on either side of Oswald’s chest, Edward rolled his hips forward. Oswald gasped, eyes fluttering shut, hips moving up to meet Ed’s. _This_ was different. This was something Oswald hadn’t experienced before. Though Ed had felt so far away since he first met Isabella, he was close now in a way he hadn’t been through the course of their relationship. To have these feelings was one thing, and to have this experience was another, but together it was something new. Something almost too much, so new that Oswald wasn’t sure how to handle it.

But he managed, because _this_ was all he wanted; Ed’s body touching his, his focus so acutely on Oswald and the tension building between the two. The circumstances weren’t ideal, and Ed probably still didn’t love him, but as long as Ed was so close and so focused, it was enough.

Ed moved his hips forward again, picking up speed, and Oswald followed suit. Somehow, in the chaos of it all, Edward’s right hand found Oswald’s shoulder and grabbed on tight. He dug his fingernails into Oswald’s pale skin, and Oswald groaned from the burn of it.

“I’m still,” Edward breathed, his words cut short after a particularly vibrant thrust evoked a near-silent moan from him. “I’m still angry with you, Oswald. Nothing’s changed.”

Oswald knew this, had been expecting some admission of the sort, but it still brought a sordid emotion to the surface of his chest. Even so, he continued to match Edward’s pace. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t.” Ed shook his head. “That just makes things more difficult.” He steadied his left hand on the bed, gripping the bedsheets to maximize the friction between Oswald and him. “All of this makes everything more difficult.” He closed his eyes.

Oswald was a mess, unwound completely with each thrust of Edward’s hips. “I don’t want you to feel conflicted, Ed.”

“Well, I am,” he hissed, releasing his grip on Oswald’s shoulder upon realizing the way it had begun to bruise. He left it hanging in the air, unsure where to put it. Edward closed his eyes, trying to lose himself in the feeling coiling deep in his stomach. “I’m just so,” his voice broke under the weight of the emotions in his head, “so _angry_.”

Oswald reached out and, sick of all the confusion, grabbed Ed’s adrift wrist. Caught off guard by the contact, Ed opened his eyes. Oswald hadn’t touched him first throughout this entire encounter.

“Then show me,” he hissed.

“What?”

“ _Show me_ how angry you are.” Oswald guided Ed’s hand back onto his shoulder.

Edward paused, taking in Oswald’s words. He didn’t move for a moment. Then, as his eyes narrowed, he dug his nails back into Oswald’s shoulder, using it as leverage to speed up the rhythm of their movements. “I want,” Edward hissed, “to deconstruct you, just like this. To strip away each and every barrier that you flaunt around every day like you’re impenetrable.” He gazed down at Oswald: head pressed against the mattress, mouth just slightly open, breath heavy, eyes opening and closing lazily, completely lost in the moment. Edward dragged his hand down Oswald’s shoulder, across his chest, scratching strawberry lines down his milky skin. “I wish I could always see you like this,” he admitted, voice throaty and pitched down.

In some other universe where the name ‘Isabella’ had no meaning to the two, this would be the moment Oswald told Ed that he loved him. But there was too much emotion, too much complexity, too much heat between them. He settled for something less overt, but still synonymous in his head. “I’m always like this with you, Ed. You’ve just never noticed.”

 

OOO

 

When Edward got out of bed, he took a moment to look Oswald over. They’d fallen asleep on opposite sides of Oswald’s bed after their encounter the night prior, exhausted from the jaunty duration of it all. In his blue pajama set, hair mussed up, eyes closed, Oswald looked so peaceful. Ed thought, against his better judgement, about the lives Oswald had taken, and how somehow he could still sleep so soundly. He thought of Isabella, feet pushing on the brakes to no avail. He thought of the fear that surely seeped through her when she realized what was going to happen. Edward’s hands clenched, anger filling up his lungs like molasses. He was stepping forward, unsure exactly what his end goal was, when he saw the crimson, bruised state of Oswald’s neck. A quiet calm came rushing into his system, and he breathed the tension from his muscles.

Everything was under his control.

Oswald was _so_ reactive. This, of all things, was what Ed found himself thinking about on the car ride over to The Sirens. It was midmorning, closer to ten than nine, and he had slipped out of the mansion without saying good morning or goodbye to Oswald. Now, he was sitting in the driver’s seat of his black convertible, humming along to some pop song on the radio that he didn’t quite recognize, his phone buzzing in the next seat over with texts, presumably from Barbara. At a stop light, he reached over to read one of them.

“ _If you’re late again Nygma, I stg I’ll strangle you…”_ his phone buzzed again, and he scrolled down to read the next message. _“Wait, nvm, forgot abt your choking kink. Just be on time.”_

Ed rolled his eyes, tossing the phone back onto the passenger’s seat and waiting for the light to turn green. He fought the urge to reply with some combative biting response, and if it wasn’t for his general distaste of texting, he probably would have. Ed already had enough trouble figuring out what people meant when they spoke, he didn’t need a faceless screen to complicate things even further.

 

OOO

 

When Oswald realized the bed space beside him was empty, he didn’t mope about it. Not having excessive experience in the area, he wasn’t entirely sure how to conduct himself the morning after a one night stand. Should he even call it that? Was it a one time thing? Oswald wasn’t sure, and he didn’t quite know how to go about asking. He was afraid that if he pushed for clarification on anything, it would shatter the patchwork connection they had tentatively created in light of the Isabella situation. Oswald was expecting to lose Ed completely; expecting the inevitable self-destruction that would come from that. Anything less clean-cut seemed better than that, no matter how messy.

So Oswald got up like everything was normal, usual, typical. His throat was still sore, accompanied by the usual ache in his leg that made getting up in the morning such an arduous process. But today he was anxious to get a start on things, just to have something to put his mind towards (and, if he was honest, to try and speed up the time between then and when he next saw Ed).

Oswald’s attempts to dress himself in a timely manner were complicated by the amount of time he spent staring at the bruises he’d accumulated in the past twenty four hours. He caught a glimpse of them in the mirror as he was buttoning his shirt, and had to stop to examine them, not having seen them the night before.

The bruises were focused on his neck, centered around the aubergine, vaguely hand shaped mark midway down his throat. Oswald remembered his collar, still buttoned up high, and how Ed had to work around it to get at him. How he ran his lips over the sensitive skin, occasionally choosing a spot to suck at. Oswald ran his hands over the smaller, plum bruises that indicated those moments, and he felt a warmth spreading through his chest.

An annoying ringing cut the moment short, and when Oswald retrieved his phone he found he didn’t recognize the number of the caller.

Bringing it up to his ear, Oswald spoke into the phone with an air of irritated confusion. “Hello?”

“Penguin,” a gruff voice on the other end of the line spoke.

Oswald brought the phone away from his ear, staring at it with squinted eyes, like he might have misinterpreted something. Bringing it back, he asked, “Jim?”

“I need your help.”

Oswald laughed, but there wasn’t much humor in his tone. “Friend, I don’t mean to be rude, but that time in our lives is _very_ much over.”

Jim sighed. “I’m at the GCPD.”

“Okay,” Oswald said, “and?”

“No, I mean,” he cleared his throat. “I’m in custody.”

Oswald’s mouth opened in disbelief, and he found himself laughing again. “Why, Jim, what on earth have you been up to? Wait, hold on, you picked me for your one phone call?”

“I need you to bail me out.”

“But why me? After everything you could’ve done for me and _didn’t_?” Oswald thought about Arkham, about Jim’s unforgiving face as he let the guards drag him back to that hell.

“I can explain everything, but not _here_ ,”

Oswald realized that Jim was probably not alone on the other side of the line, and he debated whether or not to go down to the GCPD just to get the full story. “One question,” he spoke at last, still unsure whether or not to help him. “What are you in for?”

For a moment, Jim was silent. “They brought me in for the murder of Mario Calvi.”

At first, Oswald’s mind went to Mario’s father. Then, he remembered Mario’s involvement with Lee. “The Mario Calvi who just married your ex-girlfriend?” Oswald found himself thinking about Isabella, making semi-painful parallels. “Did you do it?”

“It’s a lot more complicated than that.”

Oswald sighed, and he found himself nodding along. “It always is.” Balancing the phone between his ear and his shoulder, Oswald finished buttoning up his shirt. “I’ll be there in twenty.”

“Oswald,” Jim said, and Oswald found himself stilling. “Thank you.”

“You know the drill. You owe me.”

 

OOO

 

They were sitting in the back of a car, parked a block down from the GCPD, both of them waiting for the other to break silence. Oswald was wearing his bright red, knit scarf, tied tight around his neck as opposed to draped around his shoulders, and Jim was just staring at the back of the tinted partition that Oswald's driver sat on the other end of.

“It’s hard, you know,” Oswald said, at last.

Jim looked at him. When he didn’t say anything, Oswald continued.

“Seeing the person you love with somebody else.”

“It wasn’t like that.” Jim shook his head, and Oswald wondered whether Jim was trying to convince himself. “He had the Alice Tetch virus. He was going to hurt her, I had to stop it.”

“But there was a little part of you that wanted to, right? Since the beginning, I bet. There was a little part of you that wanted him dead.”

Jim didn’t reply, staring out the left window at the buildings looming over them. “The evidence is gone. He had a knife, but the detectives didn’t find it at the crime scene. Not even Lee thinks that I was justified.”

“And now Falcone wants your head, I assume?”

Jim nodded. “That’s why I need you.”

Oswald sighed. Ever since Ed and him had grown close, he’d found himself thinking about the dimensions of his dynamic with James Gordon with much less hesitance. Jim had used him, constantly, and Oswald was determined not to fall back into that pattern. He needed to maintain the upper hand in this situation. He needed to be transparent. “That’s our problem, isn’t it? You always need me, but you never want me.”

“Penguin,” Jim began, “I know I’ve made some mistakes with you in the past.” He reached out, resting a hand on Oswald’s shoulder in some awkward attempt at conveying his remorse. Oswald jerked back from the touch, for it was unexpectedly painful. It was only once Jim pulled his hand back that Oswald realized why. Jim had touched that spot that Ed was grabbing at the night before, the spot that Oswald had guided his hand back to, telling him to be angry, to _show_ him.

Oswald flushed at the memory, and Jim raised an eyebrow. “Is something wrong?”

“Wrong? No, nothing of the sort,” he hurried, adjusting his position further away from Jim, looking down nervously at the place on his shoulder that Jim had touched.

“And why are you wearing that scarf?” Jim asked, reaching toward him.

Oswald tried to evade his hand, but Jim was, as always, stubborn and persistent. He managed to get ahold of a section of it, and with a firm tug the whole thing fell into Oswald’s lap.

Jim pulled away in surprise, back bumping against the car door in his haste. “Christ, Penguin.”

Oswald didn’t move to cover up right away. The cat was out of the bag, and it wasn’t as if Jim hadn’t seen him wounded before.

“That’s a strangulation bruise,” Jim noted. “But the others look like…” As he trailed off, Jim’s eyes got just a slight bit wider. Realization dawned on him. “Nygma?” he asked, almost incredulously.

Oswald scoffed, picking the scarf up from his lap and re-wrapping it around his neck. “Oh, _now_ you’re suddenly so interested in my personal life, of course.”

“You mentioned Arkham before,” Jim said. “And I’ve been thinking about that too. You told me they were torturing you, and I let it slide.”

Oswald nodded, crossing his arms. “How self-reflective of you.”

“I’m not going to make that mistake again. If Nygma’s hurting you—”

“It isn’t like that,” Oswald insisted. “Like you said, these things are complicated.”

“‘These things’?”

“I guess I pulled a you. Or, rather, you pulled a me. He had a girlfriend, I thought she was a less than ideal fit. Emphasis on the _was_.”

“You killed her?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny.”

Jim looked at Oswald with disdain, and Oswald felt a tinge of that self-loathing that was so common back when they were friends, if he could even call their previous one-sided dynamic a friendship.

“Is that why you agreed to bail me out?”

Oswald nodded. “I understand you, Jim, and I know you like to think I don’t, but that doesn’t make it any less true. In this particular pickle of yours, I can relate.”

“And now you two are…” Jim trailed off, shifting uncomfortably.

“I’m not finishing that sentence for you,” Oswald said. When Jim opened his mouth again, Oswald held up a hand. “And I’m not interested in discussing this topic. Just tell me what you need.”

“A place to stay. Somewhere safe from Falcone, until I can figure things out.”

Oswald thought for a moment. “I suppose I can arrange that.”

 

OOO

 

“We need a plan,” Tabitha hissed, smacking her good hand down onto the table with an air of finality. “It’s starting to feel like the two of you are all talk,” she continued, pointedly addressing Barbara and Ed.

“I’m not all talk,” Ed argued, “but this is Penguin we’re dealing with. We need to explore all of our options before moving forward.”

“The goal is to ruin his name, right?” Butch clarified. “The real question is how can we manage to do that in _Gotham_ ? Penguin’s a convicted criminal, and he _still_ won the election.”

“Hmm,” Barbara pursed her lips, thinking. “Well, there’s always a good, old-fashioned sex scandal.”

Butch rolled his eyes. “We need something based in truth, it won’t stick otherwise, and Penguin isn’t having sex with anyone.”

Edward snickered despite himself, stopping immediately upon reevaluating the tone of the room. Immediately, everyone turned to look.

“Are you implying that he _is_?” Butch asked. “But who—”

“Nygma!” Babs put a hand to her chest, as if to clutch at her non-existent pearls. Butch, meanwhile, was staring at him with a mix of disbelief and horror on his face.

“Oh my god,” Tabitha sighed, standing up from the round table and moving to the bar to pour herself a drink.

“Well,” Ed attempted to refocus the conversation, “obviously we can’t do something in that department then. What we need is to make the public feel lied to.”

“Oh, like you?” Tabitha quipped, and Ed glared daggers at her.

“Easy, Tabs,” Barbara warned. “That’s a plausible idea, Nygma, but how could we do it?”

“We need to think of the platform he ran on.”

“Monsters?” Butch asked. “You want to make Penguin a monster?”

“Isn’t he already one?” Ed joked, and Barbara rolled her eyes beside him.

“No more so than you or me,” she drawled.

“I don’t know why this is taking you all so long,” Tabitha rolled her eyes, taking a sip of some colorless alcohol in a fancy glass cup.

“What, you’ve got an idea?” Edward asked.

“The Tetch blood. It’s the obvious solution, isn’t it?”

Barbara’s lips curled into a smile. “That’s perfect, babe.”

Something about the idea felt distinctly not right to Edward. “No,” he objected, shaking his head furiously. “Absolutely not.”

“Why not?” Barbara narrowed her eyes.

“It’s too dangerous to handle, there are so many things that could go wrong in the process.”

“Yeah, that’s why _you’d_ do it. If anyone’s equipped to handle that blood, it’s you.”

Though he agreed with that assesment, Ed shook his head again, but he couldn’t quite figure out why this time. “There’s no cure,” he said.

“Why on earth would we need a cure?” Butch asked. “We’re not trying to ruin Penguin’s status and then just, I dunno, send him off on a bus to the next town over. This is _destruction_ , Nygma. The _point_ is to damage him.”

Ed wanted to reject the idea, still, but he couldn’t think of any explanation behind the passionate feeling. He couldn’t think of anything that made it even a less than ideal plan. It was perfect. It was _absolutely_ perfect, and he hated it. “Fair enough,” he spoke through gritted teeth. “The blood it is.”

“Step one,” Barbara said, “getting ahold of it.”

Tabitha smiled. “I know a guy who can get in and out of the lab for you.”

Ed gave a terse nod, and when he spoke it was with a sense of detachment. “Excellent.”

 

OOO

 

Edward came home just as dinner was being served. When he entered the dining room, Oswald’s head whipped up to follow his path immediately. Ed straightened out his suit jacket, and then took a seat at the opposite end of the table from him. They were so far apart, it was smothering.

“Good day?” Oswald asked, tentatively.

Ed looked up. “It was alright. And yours?”

“Strange,” he admitted.

Edward stared at him without responding, and Oswald hated that Ed was even questioning inquiring further about Oswald’s day. It used to be a given. Eventually, he asked, “What happened?”

“I bailed Jim Gordon out of jail.”

Ed raised an eyebrow. “What for?”

“He killed someone.” Oswald shrugged. “Says it was in self-defense, but the proof isn’t there.”

“And why’d you have to bail him out? Doesn’t he have friends?”

“He needed protection, the person he killed was related to someone powerful. I set him up in one of the safehouses.” Oswald eyed Ed and, in attempt to get some sort of reaction, continued, “Besides, if I don’t have my best friend anymore, I should try to make others, right?”

Edward locked eyes with Oswald, face expressionless. They stared at each other for moments upon moments, and it took all of Oswald’s strength not to shout at him to speak. Instead, he looked down at his plate and cut into his ham.

“I think you should get tested,” Edward said, the tension gone from his expression and tone.

Oswald’s head whipped back up. “What?”

“It’s always a good idea to get tested before beginning any sort of sexual relationship, no matter the quantity of partners you’ve had prior or your level of monogamy with them. It’s just a safety precaution.”

Oswald stared at Edward, blinking. “Is this your way of asking if I want to have sex with you?”

Ed looked down. “I’m sorry, I just thought that with last night and all…” He trailed off, the confidence gone from his voice. “I thought we might want to keep that an ongoing thing. I didn’t mean to be presumptuous.”

Oswald found himself smiling. “No, you’re— I agree. That… Continuing would be nice.”

Edward gazed at Oswald’s smile, and found it so infectious that his lips began to form one himself. “Excellent.”


	3. dressing bad is like loving you (there is nothing i haven't worn)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Ed and Oswald's relationship continues to develop, so does Ed and Barbara's plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry I didn't update last week! With finals, flying home for break, and last minute holiday things, writing this took a lot longer than usual!
> 
> Also, this chapter ends on kind of an angsty note, but I promise this fic is going to have a happy ending!! This is probably the height of the angst (or maybe next chapter is, but that one is also going to have some fluff scenes too!!)
> 
> See you next week, and I hope you enjoy this chapter!

“I’m not _hesitant,_ ” Oswald clarified, after Edward had claimed he seemed to be. “I’m just…” He drew out the last word, trying to make it last until he could think of an adjective that fit what he was experiencing. When he couldn’t, Oswald just shrugged, lifting his hands up in an ‘oh well’ sort of gesture.

“Nervous?” Ed offered. He was sitting cross-legged on Oswald’s bed, wearing faded green pajama bottoms and a white t-shirt.

Oswald shook his head fiercely, putting a hand up in protest. “That sounds too weak.” He enunciated each word clearly, and Ed looked on at him with a mysterious kind of discontent.

“I don’t think you’re weak, Oswald,” he said, and when Oswald didn’t reply he added, “and we don’t have to do this.”

“I want to,” Oswald hurried. “I am just not exactly used to…”

“ _How_ not used to?” Edward asked, raising an eyebrow.

Oswald locked eyes with him, surprising even himself with the sign of vulnerability. “Completely.”

Edward didn’t gasp, but he let his mouth dangle open ever so slightly. “So then the other day was…”

“A new experience, to say the least.” Oswald sighed. “I’ll be honest, Ed, I’m not exactly _in love_ with the idea of letting my guard down like that.”

“But you enjoyed the other night?”

Oswald’s nose and cheeks colored. “Immensely.”

“Do you trust me?” Ed asked, and Oswald laughed humorlessly.

“I’m not _stupid_ , Ed.”

The room felt colder, suddenly. It wasn’t like the tension of their current situation hadn’t been present in the room before, but now it was being looked at, not going ignored.

Edward sighed. “No, you aren’t. But do you trust me _here_? Right now?”

Oswald looked away. “Yes.” It would be much easier if he didn’t trust Ed completely, but that just wasn’t the case. There was so much between them, too much for Oswald to believe that Ed was completely gone. His presence on the bed, hair slightly curly from being recently washed, was enough to prove that.

“This is new to me too,” Ed admitted. “Not as new as it is for you, maybe, but before Miss Kringle I hadn't…”

“It isn't our levels of experience I'm caught up on,” Oswald explained. “Intimacy is just _odd_ for me.”

Edward nodded. “Then we shouldn’t do this.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.” Oswald shook his head. He had trouble articulating what was going through his head, even to himself. “What I’m trying to say is—Ed, if we’re going to do this, I need you here with me.” He paused. “Are you?”

Edward reached out, gingerly putting a hand on Oswald’s leg. “Of course,” he said. “I want to take care of you, Oswald. I’m here.”

Oswald looked at him quizzically. “I was under the impression that you wanted to _deconstruct_ me, not take care of me.”

Ed grinned, and when he spoke again his voice was subtly deeper. “I don’t think the two have to be mutually exclusive.”

His voice, combined with the hand that rested just above Oswald’s knee, sent something sparking up Oswald’s spine that he couldn’t quite put a name to. Something that made him want to move closer.

Oswald leaned in with much less hesitancy than he would’ve expected from himself, tilting his head to catch Ed’s lips with his own. Edward responded quickly, moving his free hand up into Oswald’s hair. After a few moments of aimless kissing, Ed lifted his hand from Oswald’s leg, resting it instead against his chest.

“Does this mean that you’re ready?” Ed asked.

Oswald nodded. “Absolutely.”

Edward put both of his hands to work on Oswald’s buttons, undoing all of them this time.

“Why are you always so eager to undress me?” Oswald asked. “I _do_ have my own hands.”

“But this is more exciting,” Ed explained. “More interactive.”

Oswald laughed. “I can’t think of anybody else who would use that word during intercourse.”

“ _Pre_ -intercourse,” he corrected, watching Oswald shrug off his jacket and vest. Once he was done, Edward moved to take off Oswald’s shirt completely, stopping when Oswald recoiled ever so slightly. “What is it?” he asked.

“My apologies,” Oswald said. “I didn’t mean to do that, I just… No one’s ever really _seen_ me before, outside of a familial context, of course.”

Ed nodded. “Understandable, but incorrect.”

“Incorrect?” Oswald raised an eyebrow.

“The first time you were in my apartment,” Edward recalled. “I had to change your clothes, remember?”

Oswald smiled ever so slightly, remembering the rickety beginning of their friendship. “Oh, right.”

“And I wasn’t thinking of you in that way, obviously, but I don’t remember having _any_ negative emotions toward doing that.”

Oswald sighed, and he looked up at Edward for longer than he maybe should have. Then, Oswald guided Ed’s hands back to his shirt.

He was ready to let him in.

 

OOO

 

Edward was just getting over his post-climax discombobulation, only just having pulled out of Oswald, when his phone began to ring. He fumbled for it on the bedside table, and upon seeing the caller ID moved to hit accept. “Work call,” he explained to Oswald, “very important.”

“Ed,” Oswald groaned in part from irritation, but mostly due to the frustrating almost-overwhelm of being left so close to the edge.

He looked at Oswald, the phone stopping halfway to Edward’s ear. “You’re right,” he said, shaking his head at himself for forgetting. “Where are my manners?” As he finally pressed the phone against his ear, Edward reached down to stroke Oswald with his other hand. “Hello?” he said into the phone.

“Are we interrupting something?” Tabitha hissed on the other end, clearly annoyed that it had taken him so long to speak.

“Interrupting? No, not at all,” Ed said, watching the way Oswald’s head lolled back in light of Edward’s touches. When Ed’s thumb ran across a particularly sensitive strip on the underside of Oswald’s shaft, Oswald had to clap a hand against his own mouth in order to keep from making a sound. “What can I help you with?”

“My guy got us the vial,” Tabitha explained.

“Perfect,” Edward hissed, and something about the moment—Oswald falling apart under his hands, Tabitha telling him that all of his plans were falling into place—made him feel an undeniable sense of power. It was intoxicating.

“So we have to figure out what to do next,” she continued.

“Naturally,” Ed agreed. He quickened the pace of his hand, grinning as Oswald’s moans became more and more difficult to cover up.

“AKA,” Barbara interjected, and Ed surmised that she had taken the phone, “get your ass over here.”

“I can be there in…” He trailed off, looking at the flushed state of Oswald’s cheeks (well, what he could see of them beyond the hand covering Oswald’s mouth) and trying to estimate how long it would take him to leave the house. “Thirty minutes? Forty five, maybe?”

Barbara sighed. “You always make us wait so long,” she complained.

“I have a rather _busy_ job, if you recall.” Edward gave Oswald one last tug, and like a spool of blood-red thread, he unraveled. Oswald’s hands fell limply against the bed, and his flushed mouth elicited a long awaited, almost breathless whimper.

On the other end of the line, Barbara cackled. “On the job now, are you? You’re much more daring than I thought, Nygma. Give Ozzie my highest regards, I wish I sounded that _pretty_ while getting boinked. Oh wait,” Barbara said, pausing for dramatic effect, “nevermind, I totally do. See you in thirty.”

When the other line went dead, Ed dropped the phone onto the bed, staring at Oswald. “Oswald,” he whispered, moving his hand up to Oswald’s chest, brushing his fingers, still slightly glazed with Oswald’s cum, against the pale skin there, just to _feel_ . There was some piece deep inside of Ed that, upon seeing Oswald so thoroughly exhausted, so thoroughly trusting, felt moved beyond words. He wanted to feel Oswald everywhere, to run his hands across stomachs and chests and thighs and necks. To consume him, maybe, if only to be able to know him that thoroughly. “You’re _gorgeous_ , did you know that?”

Oswald looked up at him, eyes full of soft endearment, and smiled. “That’s you, Ed. That’s all you.” He leaned weakly up on his elbows just as Ed began to lean down, and their lips met tentatively in the middle. When they pulled back, Oswald moved into a sitting position, grabbing a fuzzy green throw blanket that had been pushed aside sometime during the encounter and wrapping it around himself. “So you’ve got to go somewhere, then?”

“Unfortunately,” he said, nodding. “It’s work stuff.”

“Since you work for me,” Oswald replied, “I suppose it’s in my benefit to let you go.”

“Precisely,” Ed agreed.

“Make sure to shower again, though. We don’t want to start any rumors now, do we?” Oswald wiggled his eyebrows salaciously, and Ed chuckled.

“I shouldn’t be back any later than five,” he assured Oswald, looking at the clock on the bedside table. It was half past eleven in the morning.

“That should work out nicely, I have some matters to attend to myself.”

“Detective Gordon?” Ed asked, standing from the bed.

“I’ve got to make sure he isn’t getting himself into any trouble, the poor fellow.”

He shrugged. “I wouldn’t exactly be heartbroken if something happened to him.”

“Nor I,” Oswald agreed, “but he’s an old friend. I feel it necessary to lend him a hand in this time of need.”

Edward nodded, pausing in the doorway. “I’m off to shower, now, but I’ll see you at dinner?”

Oswald smiled. “Yes, dinner.”

 

OOO

 

“Nygma!” Barbara exclaimed as Ed entered the room, throwing a hand up in greeting. “I want details, tell me _everything_!”

“Where’s the virus?” Edward asked, ignoring her probing.

Tabitha pointed to a briefcase on the bar. “It’s in there. None of us wanted to risk touching it.”

“That’s fine, I expected that would be the case.” He walked over to the bar, taking out his own briefcase and opening it next to the one containing the virus. Only after Ed had taken out a pair of thick rubber gloves and slipped them onto his hands did he open the other briefcase. Inside, surrounded by heavy padding, was a small vial of blood labelled with the word “Tetch”.

Edward picked the vial up, intrigued, and held it up to the light. “Wow,” he whispered.

“What?” Barbara asked, edging carefully closer.

“It looks so unsuspecting,” he explained. “To think that something that appears so commonplace could be so devastating is… Fascinating.”

“Secretly devastating,” Barbara spoke slowly. “A bit like you, then?”

Edward lowered the blood, adjusting his gaze on Barbara. He narrowed his eyes at her in confusion. “Like me?”

“I mean, one minute you’re under the sheets with Penguin, then the next you’re over here plotting his downfall. Funny, ain’t it?”

Edward scowled, and he had to admit it sounded bad when said aloud. Still, he couldn’t afford to think deeper about things like that. “Technically,” he spoke, putting the blood back into its case. “We were above the sheets.”

Behind the two, Butch put his head in his hands, mumbling something akin to, “oh my god.”

“Of course,” Barbara nodded, unfazed by the bluntness of his reply. “I suppose getting under the sheets _is_ quite a heterosexual activity.”

Edward blinked. Now _that_ caught him off guard. It wasn’t that he necessarily thought of himself as heterosexual, but he’d never really given the topic a whole lot of consideration. He breathed in, giving his head a short shake. “Anyway, what’s our next step.”

“I thought that’d be your decision,” Barbara said. “Or are you not the brains of this operation?”

“I am,” he insisted. Ed closed his eyes to think for a moment. When he opened them again, he spoke clearly. “Trial balloon.”

“What the hell is a trial balloon?” Tabitha asked, taking a seat at the bar.

“A trial balloon,” Edward explained, “is when some team leaks information to the press that is at some point going to become true, to test the public’s reaction on it. In other words, we get a reporter to do a story on Penguin being infected with the Tetch virus, and if the public responds in a way we like, we move forward with actually infecting him.”

Barbara raised a hand to her chest, letting out a satisfied breath. “Nygma, as irritating as you may come off, your knack for planning never ceases to amaze me.”

Edward smiled, always one for accepting praise, no matter the backhandedness of it.

“How do we get to the press?” Tabitha asked.

“I’ve got just the girl in mind,” Barbara said, pulling out her phone. She dialed in a number and put it on speaker phone.

“This is Valerie Vale,” the woman on the phone spoke, “may I ask who’s calling?”

“Barbara Kean,” Babs purred. “You know, James Gordon’s ex.”

“Barbara,” Valerie said, tentatively. “We aren’t together, Jim and I, if that’s what you were wondering.”

“Oh, please, I could care less who Jim’s hooking up with these days,” Barbara said, flicking her hand in dismissal as if Valerie could see her. “I’ve got bigger things on my mind. Things that I think might interest you.”

“A story?”

“If you make it one. And trust me, Vale, I believe you’ll want to.”

“What is it, then?”

“I’ve got a rumor for you. Sources say our dear mayor’s been infected with the Tetch Virus.”

Valerie inhaled, and it was a moment before she spoke again. “And how credible is this source?”

“They’d like to remain anonymous,” Barbara said, eyeing Ed. He shifted uncomfortably. “But I can assure you they work in close proximity to him. _Very_ close.”

“I don’t know, Barbara, it doesn’t seem like you have much evidence, and that’s a very dangerous claim to make.”

“When has a lack of evidence ever stopped your kind before?”

Valerie paused. “Good point.”

“I’m over at The Sirens now, if you wanted to come have a little chat about it.”

“I’m on my way.”

“See you then, babes,” Barbara drawled, pressing the end call button and putting it back onto the bar. She turned her attention back to Edward. “Unless you want your cover blown, I suggest you scram.”

“Of course,” he agreed. “One question, though.”

“What?”

“Do you flirt with _everyone_ you talk to?”

Barbara smirked, taking a wine glass off of the bar and raising it. “That’s the goal.”

 

OOO

 

“Any word on Falcone?” Oswald asked, hanging his winter coat on the stand by the front door.

“Harvey says he’s grieving right now, understandably, but hasn’t made any move to try and find me.” Jim looked up from the couch he was sitting on. “Doesn’t mean he won’t, though.”

They were in some house in a suburb just outside of Gotham, an emergency safe house of Oswald’s in case things went south (and for him, they always did). It was the only safe place of Oswald's that Gabe knew about but Zsasz didn't, so Oswald figured it was most likely safe. Even if Zsasz was willing to take Oswald's side on the issue over Falcone's, he didn't want to risk bringing up the topic with him, just in case.

“Of course,” Oswald agreed. “Grieving looks different for everyone, after all.”

Jim eyed the mostly faded bruises on Oswald’s neck. “Yeah, I guess it does.”

Averting his gaze, Oswald looked around the living room. It was a relatively nice, small house; the kind you might raise a kid in. It felt odd for the two of them to inhabit a space so domestic when it seemed unlikely either of them would ever achieve such a life. “And Miss Thompkins, anything from her?”

Jim looked down. “Not yet.”

Oswald took a seat at the edge of a black armchair, not feeling bold enough to sit on the couch next to Jim. “Feeling far away from someone who used to care for you… It’s hard, isn’t it?”

Jim looked at Oswald, nodding. “It is.”

The two fell into an awkward silence, for a moment, both of them averting the other’s gaze just slightly.

“Is that how you feel with Nygma?” Jim asked reluctantly.

Oswald gritted his teeth and held up a finger. “Don’t ask questions you don’t care about the answer to, Jim.”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know.”

“Ed and I are fine,” Oswald said, settling into the armchair. “I mean, he’s almost certainly planning some scheme to take me down, maybe kill me, but he called me gorgeous this morning, so I can’t complain.”

Jim stared at Oswald, eyes slightly narrowed. “That’s not right,” he said.

“Oh, Jim, you and your morals.” Oswald waved a gloved hand in dismissal.

“I’m serious, Penguin,” Jim growled.

Why Jim thought aggression was always the proper route to take when talking to him, Oswald was never quite sure. He rolled his eyes. “I’m _touched_ that you care so much, but I assure you I can handle myself.”

“It’s not about caring,” Jim said. “If you go down, who’ll protect me from Falcone?”

Oswald shrugged. “I’ll get Gabe on it.”

Jim shook his head in disbelief. “You’re just going to let yourself get destroyed?”

Oswald held his gaze, and when he spoke it was without his usual flair. “Some things are worth self-destruction.”

Jim looked poised to reply when a buzz from his pocket cut him short. He fumbled the phone out of his pocket, staring intently at it for a few moments, occasionally pressing something on the screen. After about a minute, he looked up at Oswald, expression dark. Placing his phone on the coffee table, he slid it over to Oswald. “Keeping Nygma… Is it worth this?”

Oswald picked the phone up, staring quizzically at Jim before focusing in on the article pulled up on his phone. The headline read, ‘ _Monster Mayor?: How Oswald Cobblepot Turned into the Very Thing His Campaign Fought Against_ ’. “I don’t understand,” he whispered, scrolling through the article. Very quickly, he realized that it was alleging that he himself was infected with the virus in Alice Tetch’s blood. “That’s not—” Oswald shook his head, locking eyes with Jim. “It isn’t true, I swear.”

“Are you sure?” Jim asked.

“Yes, Jim,” Oswald sighed. “I think I would know if I was.” He put the phone down, bowing his head. “He’s trying to make them hate me, all of them. To take away the one thing I wanted more than anything: Gotham’s love.”

“According to Harvey, it’s succeeding. The people are furious, demanding you be taken down to the GCPD for testing immediately.”

“Then I’ll go!” Oswald shouted. “I have _nothing_ to hide.”

“Listen to me, Penguin, you _have_ to stay away from Ed.”

Oswald shook his head. “Why?”

“Because I don’t think he would leak something like this to the press if he didn’t intend for it to be true,” Jim explained.

Oswald froze. “You think that he… No, he wouldn’t. Ed wouldn’t, I know him, he—”

“Oswald!” Jim shouted, standing up. “He _would_. And he will, if you don’t stay away. You have to—”

“I have to go.” Oswald mimicked Jim’s actions, standing as well. He moved across the living room, grabbing his coat and roughly tugging it on once he reached the door. Jim moved to the entryway, grabbing hold of Oswald’s wrist as he reached for the door.

“You can stay if you need to talk about this, don’t just go back home.” Jim said. “I understand how you feel about him, but don’t let that blind you from the danger of this situation. You should be furious.”

“I am! Unlike what you seem to believe, I am _not_ some pushover, and you do _not_ need to protect me from this.” He stepped closer to Jim, staring him down. “Okay?”

The ferocity in Oswald’s voice caught Jim off guard, and he raised his hands in the air in acquiescence. “Okay,” he surrendered.

“Many thanks, friend. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a much needed talk to have.” He grimaced as he spoke, vehemently not looking forward to the task ahead of him.

“Penguin,” Jim spoke, as Oswald opened the door.

“What?”

“Take care of yourself.”

“I’d like to address the same sentiments to you.” He turned around just slightly, catching a glimpse of Jim’s eyes. “And thank you, really. I do appreciate it.”

Jim nodded, and Oswald continued out the door. When it shut behind him, Jim let out a long sigh.

 

OOO

“Ed!” Oswald called out, walking as fast through the mansion as his leg would let him. He found Ed at his desk, going over paperwork like nothing was out of the ordinary. Seeing this, all of the anger Oswald had denied himself toward their situation flooded into him. “Ed!” he repeated.

Edward looked up from the papers on his desk, blinking. “Yes?”

“I read the article.”

“You’re going to have to be a bit more specific.”

Oswald shook his head. “ _No_. You know what I’m talking about.”

Ed sighed, staring at the ground. When he spoke, it was pointed, without falter. “You killed the love of my life.”

“You knew her for a week!” Oswald countered. “And I’ve done _everything_ I could to make things better for us, but you just won’t let this go!”

“Let this go?” Ed repeated, standing up. “It isn’t like you insulted my cooking or something, Oswald, you murdered my girlfriend.”

“Oh, but we both know this has _nothing_ to do with her.”

“What did you just say?”

Oswald considered staying quiet, but he swallowed hard and loosened his shoulders. “You aren’t angry because she’s dead, or because I killed her. Your feelings would be much more clean cut if that were the case. You’re only mad at yourself.” As he spoke the last sentence, Oswald reached a finger out, hitting Ed in the chest with it accusatorily.

With gritted teeth, Ed narrowed his eyes at Oswald. “And what reason would I have to be mad at myself?”

“Because you killed Kristen Kringle, and you _never_ took the time to deal with it. So you meet her spitting image and you play house for a week, like you aren’t a killer, like you aren’t the villain of this story, like people like us can have relationships separate from who we are. But we can’t. We cannot deny who we are, Ed, and that is something you would’ve realized whether or not I had intervened. This is _not_ about me at all, and yet all of your anger gets taken out on me. It’s not fair, and I know you know that!”

Ed drew back, and Oswald saw hurt in his eyes for a moment. Then, he shook his head. “That is _not_ true,” he said, voice shaking, breaking. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t expect you to see it, you never do when it comes to yourself, but I do. I know you better than anyone, and you’re getting ready to ruin my life.”

Edward bared his teeth. “It’s the proper course of action.”

“And are you ready for it?” Oswald asked, and Ed raised an eyebrow in confusion. “Are you ready for me to be gone, Ed? Because if you go through with this, that’s the end of whatever we have. You can’t keep kissing me, _touching_ me, while destroying me behind my back! You can’t have it all. You have to choose.”

Ed’s face was a confused mask of many emotions at once, the hurt still present in his eyes, his lips trembling. It was like Oswald was breaking his mask, finally. For a moment, it looked like his words were going to win.

And then Edward’s face grew closed off again. “Then I’ll take the revenge.”

Oswald bit his lip, and he bowed his head as he began to tear up. Edward moved forward, pushing past him, and after a moment he heard the front door slam.

He fell to his knees, not caring that the dramatic display of emotion had aggravated his leg, and pulled himself into a tight, tense ball.

This, whatever it had been or could have become, was over.

 


	4. now there's always time calling for me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is lyrics from Panic! At the Disco's "Always" (which is a very good song for these two, I encourage all of you to give it a listen).
> 
> My apologies for this being a couple days late! I've had a pretty bad cold (fever and all) since New Year's Eve, which slowed down the writing process a whole lot. 
> 
> This is sort of an interim chapter, and then next chapter is going to be the big climax of everything. I'm thinking I'll do one epilogue esque chapter after that one (hopefully released on the same day Gotham comes back, so that anyone who needs a little bit of fluff on that day can get their fix). 
> 
> And, most importantly, I wanna thank all of you for the amazing comments!!! Wow!! I love all of you so much, you're 100% my driving force when it comes to writing this fic. To everyone who's commented, or bookmarked, or left kudos: thank you so so much.

The sky was in that mid-blue state of getting dark, and Ed was clutching the steering wheel like he wanted it to suffocate. Maybe he did.

He wasn’t sure where he was driving, or whether he was getting closer to or farther from the city, just that he needed to keep going. He wasn’t feeling anything, for what on earth could he be feeling? This destruction was long-awaited for him that the promise of imminent success should’ve felt uncomplicated.

He wasn’t feeling anything. He wasn’t.

Edward did not realize he was crying until his vision began to blur, and only then did he feel the hot sting of tears slipping down his cheeks. To avoid any reckless behavior that could follow such an outburst, he pulled off onto the shoulder of the road. When the car stopped, Ed looked around at the wooded area surrounding the road he was on. Farther from the city, then.

He wasn’t angry because of Kristen. This wasn’t about that at all. He had dealt with that -  no, he had _evolved_ from that. The man who had agonized over her last breaths just wasn’t him anymore.

“Isn’t that exactly what our dear Ozzie was just accusing you of?” Edward saw the other him in the rearview mirror like an echo: not fully corporeal, but not fully admissible.

“I’m not saying that I split off from that man, I just grew,” Ed growled. “And Oswald isn’t _our_ anything.”

The vision in the backseat chuckled, shaking his head. He looked different than he did in past delusions, his image having grown with Ed’s himself. What separated him from the Edward with his hands resting on the steering wheel, though, was no different than usual: dead eyes, that confident smirk, the absence of glasses resting atop his nose. “You’re right,” he said, a dry humor evident in his tone. “My bad, you would _never_ separate parts of your personality. How could I even think that?”

Edward glared at the mirror. “Why are you even here? I _dealt_ with this.”

“You’re right,” he agreed. “You did. And believe me, I thought we were all good after that fascinating scavenger hunt with Kristen, but here we are now.”

Ed sighed. He was still crying, though for what reason he didn’t know, or just couldn’t quite acknowledge. He despised crying. “Oswald said that I was trying to have my relationship with Isabella separate from who I am. Like I wasn’t putting my whole self into it.”

“And you don’t agree?”

Edward buried his head in his hands, and he couldn’t decide whether he was avoiding looking at the projection of himself, or at his own tears in the mirror, or maybe all of it. “I loved her,” he said, and he was so used to hearing some biting response on how little time he’d actually known her that when it didn’t come he felt caught off guard, like something wasn’t right. The words were hanging in the air now, unchallenged, and they itched at him until he couldn’t take it any longer.

“I wanted to be with her,” he amended, whispering the words like they were dangerous. “I thought that maybe I could do it differently this time. I wanted to get it right. I loved everything I thought I could have with her,” his voice broke, and he took his hands off his face to stop the overwhelming feeling of suffocation within him. “But it was gone before it even began.”

The hazy, separated half of him in the back seat gave a long sigh of relief. “There it is,” he said. “Do you miss her?”

“Every day.”

“Funny.”

Edward’s head whipped up. “How is that _funny_ ?” 

“I don’t recall you missing Kringle hardly at all. So, what, you just loved Isabella a hell of a lot more?”

“No,” he said, almost defensively. He had known Kristen for months and months, spent such a long time pining and wanting and getting nowhere. He’d loved her, truly, and he found he couldn’t compare that to the affection he held for Isabella, despite her loveliness. She’d been like a ghost in his life: there one moment, gone the next. Like a trick of the light. He couldn’t love someone who was not fully tangible in his life.

“So why all the tears, then?”

“Wait,” Ed stopped, holding up a hand. “You agree with Oswald, don’t you?”

The other Ed shrugged, flashing a devilish grin. “What can I say, the little bird has a point. And besides, I can’t get _enough_ of the way he moans our name.”

Ed felt, for a moment, almost jealous of this other version of himself for getting to think of Oswald in such an uncomplicated manner. For getting to picture him spread out under Edward without thinking of the lies, and the retribution, and all the little things that nagged at his mind when they were together. Now _that_ \-- that was something he would have to unpack later.

Maybe that was the problem. Maybe there was too much left to be unboxed.

“You’re not here because I’m at war with myself again,” Ed said. “You’re here because I need to face myself.”

“And as Ozzie said, you’re not exactly a pro when it comes to self-reflection.”

“So if I blink, if I just blink and will you away, you’ll be gone?” he asked, and when the other Ed didn’t respond he shut his eyes.

When he opened them again, he was alone in the car with his tears and his anger and his sinking suspicion that Oswald, deep down, was telling him something true. He was alone with everything, again, and it was all so loud.

Edward slumped, shaking and holding himself like some sad, makeshift hug, the tears ripping through him like they were their own entity altogether. There was an ache, deep beneath his ribs, drumming its way up to his mind and scrambling his thoughts. It was illogical, and counterproductive, but it was still undeniably there.

He missed Oswald.

 

OOO

 

When Ed awoke, it was to the sound of a phone ringing. In his post dream fog, (he could remember some of it: hands, warmth, blue eyes. Oswald’s presence, not doing anything, just _there_ ) he ended up smacking his head on the sun visor in his haste to right himself. Looking around, Ed was even more confused than before. The sun was casting a glow on the thick clouds typical for Gotham’s winters, his back ached as if uncomfortably twisted for too long, and the clock in his car read _8:16am_. Had he really slept in his car?

Reaching for the phone on his dashboard, Ed answered with a groggy voice. “Hello?”

“Nygma, we’ve been trying to get ahold of you since last night. Where the hell have you been?” Barbara asked.

“Asleep,” Ed answered.

She sighed. “Well I’ve got good news for you, Gotham is going absolutely _ballistic_ over our story. Demanding recall elections and blood tests and all kinds of fun little things. It’s going just like we planned.”

“Wonderful,” Ed said, and he found his voice hollow against his own ears.

“Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” Barbara quipped.

“I fell asleep in my car,” he admitted. “It wasn’t very comfortable.” Uncomfortable seemed an understatement for the night prior. Out of all the ways to fall asleep, in the front seat of a car after a breakdown was not at the top of his list. The thought popped into his head about what _might_ be at the top, (hands, warmth, blue eyes,) and he shut his eyes harshly to block it out.

“In your car?” Barbara asked. “What, trouble in paradise?”

“You could say.”

“Nothing that’ll affect the plan, I hope?”

“Of course not.”

“Good, then get over here.”

“Forty minutes,” he said.

Barbara sighed, and for a moment he thought she would protest again, but all she said was a despairing, “fine,” and the line went dead.

When Edward got to The Sirens, he found himself perplexed by the balloons tied up at either side of the bar. “Whose birthday did I forget about?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.

“These aren’t birthday balloons,” Barbara corrected. “They’re celebration balloons.”

“And what are we celebrating?”

“Our _Plan_.” She drew out the last word, raising a hand for emphasis. “Duh.”

“Isn’t it a little early for that? I mean, we haven’t even figured out when to enact the final stages.”

“Well I don’t see any reason to wait, let’s get a jump on it before we lose the public’s anger. We should do it tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Ed raised an eyebrow. “That’s _incredibly_ soon.”

“Everything’s ready,” Barbara snipped. “Why _not_ tomorrow?” 

“I just didn’t realize it would be so soon.” He was sounding weak, and he knew it. Sounding like he’d prepared for the eventuality of the event, but not the event itself. Ed wasn’t weak, he couldn’t allow himself to be. That was one of the many reasons he had to go through with this; he couldn’t allow his resolve to be cracked by a few critical words thrown his way, nor by the ache in his chest when he thought about how many hours it had been since he’d seen Oswald, and how they’d left things the night prior. Clearing his throat, Ed straightened his posture. “Tomorrow sounds perfect. Are you sure that everything’s ready?”

“We’ve found the perfect warehouse down by the water. You’re gonna come here in the morning, give Butch the key to the mansion, and get the blood all loaded and ready. Butch and Tabby will go _retrieve_ Penguin, and then you and me will head down to the warehouse, where you’ll do the honors.” 

“And then?”

“I suppose then we’ll send you and Oswald down to the GCPD, where you can claim he’s attacked you—I might have to punch you in the face to make it look real, apologies in advance— and then they’ll test his blood. After that, darling, it’s our turn to run Gotham.”

“Alright,” Edward said, staring at the wall behind Barbara. He couldn’t bear to make eye contact, even more so than usual. Ed felt completely out of his depths. But this was what he wanted. This was what he had to do.

“Good, now that that’s all settled,” Barbara moved to the bar, patting the space next to her for him to come closer, “we can celebrate.”

 

OOO

 

Oswald felt almost debilitated. It had been over a day since the article had come out, and he knew he should’ve gone down to the GCPD already, if only to ease the public’s mind. It was a terrible anxiety, watching as the public began to hate him, even moreso because he knew he could’ve stopped it already if he actually tried.

But he wasn’t. He wasn’t trying. He got out of bed in the morning, briefly, attempted to eat breakfast, and then found himself back in bed again, the lights off. It was as if his thoughts were swimming. As if they were drowning.

Was this what Ed felt? All the confusion, all of the mixed feelings. Ed was gone. He was gone.

He was gone.

And Oswald had pushed him to it. He had pushed Ed toward an ultimatum. Though he’d tried to be happy with Ed’s role in his life, if only because it was _something_ , he’d grown tired.

God, he was _so_ tired.

Oswald slept, drifting in and out, feeling almost comatose. He had to move, he knew, he had to deal with the real world, but he just couldn’t.

After losing so many people already, Oswald found himself surprised at his own harsh reaction to losing Ed. What was one more person gone? What was one more light lost?

Everything. It felt like everything.

 _He_ felt like everything.

If Edward’s goal was to take Oswald apart, he was quickly succeeding.

 

OOO

 

When Ed entered the mansion, he was stumbling. The alcohol in his system was almost like a blanket of energy surrounding him, a warm hum radiating from his body. He felt sluggish, trapped within himself, unable to escape the thoughts swimming through his head. This wasn’t even his thing, getting drunk, but he’d always heard that there was no better way to run from problems. On the contrary, Ed’s inebriation served only to isolate himself with his thoughts. They were all he saw.

He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to face the inevitability of it. He had only just lost the one person he thought he loved, and he wasn’t sure he was ready to lose Oswald as well. He was coming to the realization that to destroy Oswald meant to destroy himself. Maybe that’s what he was counting on.

The deafening thoughts in his head were overwhelming, combined with the fact that he wasn’t even sure why he’d gone back to the mansion when Oswald clearly wouldn’t want to see him. He just wanted the tension to be over. He wanted everything to be quiet.

That ache in Ed’s chest was back again, and he was all too aware that it had been over twenty four hours since he’d last seen Oswald. He went into his own room, traded his suit for a pajama set, and then, without even thinking about what he was doing, found himself navigating the route from his room to Oswald’s.

The door was already half-open, as if Oswald was expecting Ed’s return (hoping for it, perhaps). When he slipped into the room, he found Oswald lying under the blankets with the lights out. At first, he assumed he was asleep. However, as his eyes adjusted to the dark, it became clear that Oswald was staring at the ceiling.

“You’re back,” Oswald noted, a slight tremor in his voice.

“I am.” He wanted to sound confident, but the alcohol made it difficult to lie like that.

Oswald rolled onto his side, facing Ed. “Why are you here, Ed?”

“I don’t… I can’t figure out anything, anymore. Everything I wanted, everything I _want_ … None of it makes sense to me. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about you.”

“So why not just stay away?”

“Because.” Ed took a deep breath, steadying himself on the doorway with his right hand. “Because I’m intoxicated, and I slept in my car last night, and everything is turning out _right_ for me… But all I want right now,” his voice broke, “is to be _close_ to you, Oswald.”

Oswald should have done the vindictive thing. He should have shut down, turned Edward away like Edward had done to him the night prior. Taking that road was something that came naturally to him.

But this was Ed. Ed who had once said that he would do _anything_ for Oswald. Ed who believed in him like no one else did, like no one else had _ever_. This was Edward Nygma, the only person who Oswald had ever found himself wanting to unwind for, wanting to put before himself.

He pulled back the blankets beside him, locking eyes with Ed in the dark.

Edward inched into the room, hesitant, and settled into the bed beside Oswald, pulling the covers back up.

Oswald moved closer to Ed, and Ed in turn wrapped his arms around Oswald’s middle. As Oswald moved to rest his head against Ed’s chest, Ed found himself letting out a sigh he felt he had been holding in for hours. An expansive lightness filled his lungs, clearing all of the day’s confusion from his head. _This_ was what nights were supposed to be like. This was what life was supposed to feel like.

And tonight was the last time Ed would ever get a chance to experience this. He swallowed, and found himself pulling Oswald closer, still.

Remembering Ed’s words the first time they were on this bed together, Oswald spoke quiet but firm, “This doesn’t change anything.”

“No,” Ed agreed, almost hollowly, “it doesn’t.”

“But, since you are here, I might as well say what I wanted to. What I’ve _been_ wanting to for some time.”

Ed waited for Oswald to continue, and was beginning to think he wasn’t going to when he finally spoke again.

“I know you know, and I know I’ve talked about it, but I’ve never just _said_ it. I was too worried about what you might think.” Oswald gulped, and he found Ed’s eyes in the dark. “I love you.”

Edward’s mouth felt a little too dry, his eyes a little too wet. Everything felt suddenly off-kilter, perhaps from the alcohol, perhaps from the announcement.

Oswald _loved_ him. Ed was taking away everything he’d wanted, dismantling the fairytale life they’d built around themselves amid the election, but Oswald was still laying here with him because Ed needed him close.

Ed knew, yes, but there was always a part of his brain that wrote Oswald’s love off as a selfish, incomplete form of the emotion. But after this, he knew that that wasn’t the case. It was almost too much to take in.

No, it _was_ too much.

Edward’s eyes stung as he began to cry, and soon after he felt Oswald’s hands on his face, wiping his tears away. Oswald regarded him with a solemn sort of look, pressing their foreheads together. “You look exhausted,” he whispered.

“I don’t remember the last time I _wasn'_ _t._ ”

Oswald chuckled faintly. “Revenge does tend to suck at a person like that.”

“How do you do it so well? How do you pull off doing such damage to people and still have time to breathe and eat and spend time with me? It’s amazing, you know that? I don’t get how you do it.”

“It’s easy, Ed,” Oswald admitted. “It’s easy for me, because I don’t hurt the people that matter.”

Another hot tear slid down Ed’s cheek, and Oswald wiped away before it had a chance to reach his jaw.

“Please, get some rest,” Oswald insisted. “I’m sure you’ve had quite a day.”

“Oswald,” Ed whispered, running his thumb up and down the fabric of Oswald’s pajama top, just over the bumps of his spine. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not,” Oswald replied, equally as quiet. He moved his hand from Edward’s face, choosing to run it through his hair instead. “But I do appreciate the thought.”


End file.
